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Robo sapiens: Japan

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  • Many Japanese roboticists were inspired as a child by Tetsuwan Atomu (Astro Boy), a popular Japanese cartoon about a futuristic robot boy who helps human beings (here, it is a 15-centimeter Astro Boy action figure). Astro Boy, drawn in the 1950's, will soon be the star of a major motion picture. In the story line, his birthdate is in April of 2003. Japan. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 197.
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  • With government-funded construction clogging roadways throughout Japan, traffic robots like this one have become increasingly common. Standing in the Tokyo restaurant supply district, this artificial policeman politely raises and lowers its arm to slow down approaching vehicles. Anzen Taro (Safety Sam), are full 3-D mock-ups of policemen so realistic that oncoming drivers can't tell them from the real thing. Although the makers of these machines describe their products as "robots," many engineers would not, because they do not respond to their environment and cannot be reprogrammed. Japan. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 170-171.
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  • In Osaka, Japan, battery-powered robots?called Anzen Taro (Safety Sam) are used to control traffic. Robots like this one are becoming more common in Japan around government funded construction sites. These three dimensional robots can often be mistaken for real traffic guards.
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  • Ten years and tens of millions of dollars in the making, the Honda P3 strides down its course at the car company's secret research facility on the outskirts of Tokyo, Japan. The product of a costly decade-long effort, the Honda robotic project was only released from its shroud of corporate secrecy in 1996. In a carefully choreographed performance, P3 walks a line, opens a door, turns a corner, and, after a safety chain is attached, climbs a flight of stairs. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 34-35.
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  • Deftly opening a door, the Honda P3 walks its assigned path at the Honda Research Center, outside Tokyo, Japan. The product of a costly decade-long effort, the Honda robotic project was only released from its shroud of corporate secrecy in 1996. In a carefully choreographed performance, P3 walks a line, opens a door, turns a corner, and, after a safety chain is attached, climbs a flight of stairs. Despite its mechanical sophistication, it can't respond to its environment. If people were to step in its way, the burly robot would knock them down without noticing them. Ultimately, of course, Honda researchers hope to change that. But, in what seems an attempt to hedge the company's bet, P3 senior engineer Masato Hirose is also working on sending the robot to places where it cannot possibly injure anyone. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 42.
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  • Utterly ignoring the safety chain attached to the base of its "neck," the Honda P3 confidently walks down a flight of steps in the company lab. More than a decade ago, at the beginning of the Honda project, the research team concluded that their robot would have to be able to walk, rather than simply roll on wheels. Wheeled robots, they decided, just couldn't function in a contemporary home full of stairs, toy-strewn floors, thick pile rugs, and other obstacles. Today P3 can walk with impressive smoothness. The only real sign of its robotic nature is the way it begins to walk with a little knee-dip, to compensate for the absence of a pelvis. Japan. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 44.
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  • Lights from futuristic concept cars reflecting in the shiny column behind his head, Honda P3 chief engineer Masato Hirose has been entrusted with the transportation company's hopes of getting beyond wheels. Tokyo, Japan. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 45.
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  • ASIMO (Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility), is the newest addition to the Honda Humanoid Robot family. It is on display daily at Suzuka City Circuit, where young and old converge to watch racing, ride amusement park rides, and also watch this child-sized robot introduced by a beauty queen walk, wave, and dance four times daily. The press literature for ASIMO states "By helping people, and becoming their partners, Honda robots are opening the door to the 21st Century." Honda R&D expects that "ASIMO will help improve life in human society.".
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  • Though tentative at first, brother and sister Taichi (3, at left) and Shino (5) warm up to the robot ASIMO (Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility) and agree to stand close enough to get a good look at the small stature robot after a performance at Suzuka City, Japan. Honda's walking robot, called ASIMO, is child-sized and has more maneuverability than it's predecessor, the Honda P3. Pictured here at Suzuka City, Japan, amusement complex..
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  • In Suzuka City, Japan, ASIMO, (Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility), a humanoid robot designed by Honda stands with the Suzuka Circuit Queen, and waves to the audience. Honda's walking robot, is child-sized and has more maneuverability than it's predecessor, the Honda P3. Unlike the P3, which couldn't be stopped once it began it's programmed routine, ASIMO can be controlled by either joystick or computer program. Pictured here at Suzuka City (a race track and amusement park), Japan.
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  • In a situation all too familiar to robotics researchers, Atsuo Takanishi (on right) is trying to make his creation work. His research team's robot, WE-3RIII (Waseda Eye Number 3 Refined Version III) can follow a light with its digital-camera eyes, moving its head if needed. In the laboratory the robot worked perfectly, its movements almost disconcertingly lifelike. But while being installed at a robot exhibit in Tokyo, WE-3RIII inexplicably and violently threw back its head, tearing apart its own wiring. Now Takanishi and one of his students are puzzling over the problem and will solve it only in the early hours of the morning before the exhibit opened. Japan.From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 40-41..
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  • Researchers adjust the mechanism of WE-3RIII, Waseda University's head robot, after it accidentally whiplashed into its own wires. In a situation all too familiar to robotics researchers, Atsuo Takanishi ( hand on right) is trying to make his creation work. His research team's robot, WE-3RIII (Waseda Eye Number 3 Refined Version III) can follow a light with its digital-camera eyes, moving its head if needed. In the laboratory the robot worked perfectly, its movements almost disconcertingly lifelike. But while being installed at a robot exhibit in Tokyo, WE-3RIII inexplicably and violently threw back its head, tearing apart its own wiring. Now Takanishi and one of his students (hand on left) are puzzling over the problem and will solve it only in the early hours of the morning before the exhibit opened. Japan. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 233.
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  • First generation face robot from the Hara-Kobayashi Lab in Tokyo. Lit from behind to reveal the machinery beneath the skin. The machinery will change the contours of the robot's skin to create facial expressions. It does this by using electric actuators, which change their shape when an electric current is passed through them. The devices will return to their original shape when the current stops. This robot face was developed at the Laboratory of Fumio Hara and Hiroshi Kobayashi at the Science University, Tokyo, Japan.
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  • Lit from within to reveal the machinery beneath its skin, this second-generation face robot from the Hara-Kobayashi laboratory at the Science University of Tokyo, Japan, has shape-memory actuators that move like muscles creating facial expressions beneath the robot's silicon skin. Made of metal strips that change their shape when an electric current passes through them, the actuators return to their original form when the current stops. The robot head is lit from within by a pencil light strobe cloaked in a yellow gel.From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 77.
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  • First generation face robot from the Hara-Kobayashi Lab in Tokyo. Lit from behind to reveal the machinery beneath the skin. The machinery will change the contours of the robot's skin to create facial expressions. It does this by using electric actuators, which change their shape when an electric current is passed through them. The devices will return to their original shape when the current stops. Unfortunately these actuators proved very slow at returning to their original shape, causing an expression to remain on the face for too long. This robot face was developed at the Laboratory of Fumio Hara and Hiroshi Kobayashi at the Science University, Tokyo, Japan. The robot head is lit from within by a pencil light strobe cloaked in a yellow gel.
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  • Professor Fumio Hara and Assistant Professor Hiroshi Kobayashi's female face robot (second-generation) at Science University of Tokyo, Japan, has shape-memory electric actuators that move beneath the robot's silicon skin to change the face into different facial expressions much as muscles do in the human face. The actuators are very slow to return to their original state and remedying this is one of the research projects facing the Hara and Kobayashi Lab. The robot head is lit from within by a pencil light strobe cloaked in a yellow gel. It was photographed in the neon bill-boarded area of Shinjuku, a section of Tokyo, on a rainy evening at rush hour. Robo sapiens cover image. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species.
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  • Students in the laboratory of Professor Fumio Hara and Hiroshi Kobayashi at Science University of Tokyo work on their various robot projects, including the labs' first generation face robot. This three-dimensional human-like animated pneumatic face robot can recognize human facial expressions as well as produce realistic facial expressions in real time. The animated face robot, covered in latex "skin" is equipped with a CCD camera in the left eye and is able to collect facial image data that is used for on-line recognition of human facial expressions.
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  • Trying to concentrate in a crowded, busy workspace, graduate student Harumi Ayai pats makeup onto the immobile features of a face robot in the Hara-Kobayashi Laboratory. This machine, the first face robot built in the lab, has a single camera in its left eye. Notwithstanding the relative simplicity of its design, the machine was able to smile when people approached it. Although rapidly superseded by later models, the lab went through three generations in a few years, the robot is still being studied. Japan. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 78-79.
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  • A work in progress, this still-unnamed face robot can open its eyes and smile. In the future, says its designer, Hidetoshi Akasawa, a mechanical engineering student working on a master's at the Science University of Tokyo, Japan,  it will be able to recognize and react to human facial expressions. This third-generation robot will greet smiles with smiles, frowns with frowns, mixing and matching six basic emotions in a real-time interaction that Hara calls "active human interface." From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 72.
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  • A work in progress, this still-unnamed face robot can open its eyes and smile. In the future, says its designer, Hidetoshi Akasawa, a mechanical engineering student working on a master's at the Science University of Tokyo, Japan,  it will be able to recognize and react to human facial expressions. This third-generation robot will greet smiles with smiles, frowns with frowns, mixing and matching six basic emotions in a real-time interaction that Hara calls "active human interface."
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  • Student Yousuke Kato points to a female face robot created at the Science University of Tokyo, Japan, Fumio Hara Robotics Lab. The female face robot (secondgeneration) has shape-memory electric actuators that move beneath the robots' silicon skin to change the face into different facial expressions much as muscles do in the human face. The research robot undergoes a metamorphosis with each class of students assigned to work on it. The latest iteration allows the robot's face to mold into six different expressions: happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, and surprise. In some images, the computer monitor displays a graphical representation of the software creating the expression on the robot.
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  • Lurching from side to side like an infant figuring out how to walk, the biped-locomotion robot in the Fukuda Lab at Nagoya University tentatively steps forward under the parental supervision of graduate student Kazuo Takahashi. Designed by Toshio Fukuda, a professor of mechanical engineering, the robot is intended to test what Fukuda calls "hierarchical evolutionary algorithms" software that repeats an action, learning from its mistakes until it approaches perfection. Japan. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 46-47.
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  • Posing for a portrait at the Osaka  (Japan) University Department of Computer-Controlled Mechanical Systems, Junji Furusho (seated) and research associate Masamichi Sakaguchi show off Strut, their child-sized humanoid robot. At the time, the robot, a work in progress, could not walk at all?it could only stand. (It walked sometime later.) But simply getting the robot to stand properly was a major accomplishment. Like a human being, Strut has such complex, interreacting mechanical "musculature" that considerable processing power is needed simply to keep it erect. Japan. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 49.
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  • Looming out of the shadows in the Humanoid Research Lab of Tokyo's Waseda University, WABIAN-RII is capable of walking and even dancing. WABIAN sways from side to side as it walks, but its builders are not discouraged by its imperfections: walking in a straight line, which humans can do without thinking, in fact requires coordinated movements of such fantastic complexity that researchers are pleased if their creations can walk at all. Indeed, researchers built the robot partly to help themselves understand the physics of locomotion. It took decades of work to bring WABIAN to its present state: its first ancestor was built in 1972. Japan. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 36.
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  • In a years-long quest, students at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan are constantly tweaking the programming of WABIAN R-II in the hope of making the heavy, two-meter-tall machine walk as easily as a human being. WABIAN sways from side to side as it walks, but its builders are not discouraged by its imperfections: walking in a straight line, which humans can do without thinking, in fact requires coordinated movements of such fantastic complexity that researchers are pleased if their creations can walk at all. Indeed, researchers built the robot partly to help themselves understand the physics of locomotion. It took decades of work to bring WABIAN to its present state: its first ancestor was built in 1972. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 14.
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